Art

Salon gives good coverage to the argument around the Rubens painting’s authenticity. You can see the full painting at the National Gallery and I have to agree with detractors: I took one look at it and thought there was no way it was a Rubens. It really was a load of old tatt.

A few fun things about the article: the usual amusing Americanisms that appear whenever discussing anything foreign (eg “A London computer expert”); that the left-leaning Salon only quotes the equally left-wing The Guardian (Simon Schama’s review at that!) and the New Statesman as authoritative British journals; and the fact Euphrosyne Doxiadis seems to be a ‘divvy‘.

According to the BBC, the true emotions displayed by the ‘Mona Lisa’ are mostly happiness, but with a little bit of disgust thrown in. After years of “why was she smiling?”, we have an even more disturbing question to answer now…